Look'd Up In Perfect Silence
by Belle of Books
Summary: In the silence of the evening and under the stars, Bellamy tells the story of Polaris, the North Star.


Bellamy blinks, focuses his eyes, and looks up from where he has been peering at hand-drawn maps with Kane, and notices that at some point in the past few hours, night has crept over the land and enveloped their camp into its dark folds. He collapses onto a crate that rests on the ground near their makeshift table and rubs his eyes with his fists. He's so _goddamn_ _tired_. The two of them have been working for hours, trying to make sense of the maps (_which,_ he thinks, _should not even be called _maps). Clarke had done her best to make a complete map, and Lincoln had been an enormous help, but there was only so much they could do with their limited supplies and rudimentary knowledge of the territory.

Raising his head from his hands, he looks up at Kane who has moved away from the table and is rolling his neck, trying to loosen the tense knots Bellamy assumes he too has. Kane looks over at Bellamy and offers a rueful smile. "I think that's all we can do today," he states.

Bellamy nods in reply. They've made some progress, but not _nearly_ enough. They are going to have to send out scouts to discover and record more of the ground soon, which Bellamy knows is an action with potential consequences that Kane and Abby do not want to risk. "Go get something to eat," he hears Kane instruct, and he focuses his attention back on the older man. "Keep your strength up." Kane moves toward the doorway, pauses, turns around and nods at Bellamy, "maybe I can talk Abby into letting you and I go out and make more sense of those maps."

Bellamy feels a flash of gratitude for the older man's instinct and nods. Kane moves through the door, but Bellamy remains seated for a few more minutes. He breathes in and out, feels the exhaustion pull at his muscles. He's just so _tired_. He sits, his head in his hands, and tries to clear his brain, but fails.

He pushes himself up from the crate and moves toward the door. He hasn't seen Octavia or Clarke all day, he realizes suddenly. A sudden wave of panic sweeps over him, and he swiftly moves out of the tent and scans the camp yard. He spots Lincoln and Clarke's shadowed faces by a flickering campfire; they are alone beside it, the fire itself tucked away from most of the camp activity. _They keep doing this_, he thinks. They see the Arkers' stares and the suppressed uncertainty (_it's fear_, he always thinks, _their stupid, immature fear_), and move themselves away from the camp.

(He feels their uncertainty and anger and grief in his bones. They all feel disjointed at moments, these four, from their different grief and resentments. Octavia's lack of belonging, Clarke's detachment and guilt, Lincoln's foreignness…he knows their displacement, feels their grief, joins them as they fight, tries to support them as they flounder and fall.)

_It's not so simple and easy, though_, he considers. There are people to manage, to talk with, to argue with, and he _can't_ just sit and wait. God, he wants to. But there's Raven, in her anger and grief, and Kane who actually wants to listen, and Abby who doesn't understand what it means to listen, and he's so damn _tired_.

He never has time to think, sit, remember, and contemplate the lessons he has learned, the stories he knows. _He's trying_, he believes. He is trying, perhaps futilely, but he is trying to be better, trying to stumble his way through leading without the unity of the three.

_Earth is just so damn hard_, he thinks. It's a prison and a promise; a threat and an opportunity. It is the place where his sister can finally be free, but where she can also be killed in an instant. He can no longer keep her safe, and cannot keep safe the large crowd of kids he has accepted (_unwillingly_, he tells himself) into his protection.

_Octavia_, he remembers. Unlike normal, she is not sitting next to Lincoln, and he worries. He weaves his way through the camp yard, and makes his way toward their campfire. "Where's O?" he barks, his voice harsher than he intends. Lincoln starts from his contemplation and stares at Bellamy, moves his gaze into the distance, and nods. Bellamy turns and squints off into the dark, sees Octavia's dark hair near the table that holds the evening's rations. He sees her turn and stare back at the campfire and smile when she glimpses him. He instinctively smiles back, his eyes softening at the sight of her, his sister, the warrior, with a knife strapped to her leg at the ready. In the distance, she holds up a pack of food and tilts her head. He nods, and she turns back to the person manning the table.

Bellamy turns back to face the fire, and stares down at Clarke. Her back is to the camp with her shoulders hunched over, and she is staring at her hands, rubbing her index fingers and thumbs together. He reaches out a palm and wraps it around her shoulder. She briefly freezes, exhales a single breath, and then tilts her head away from his hand. He moves his hand up her shoulder and wraps his hand around the base of her neck, and squeezes. She tenses, relaxes but doesn't respond; Bellamy then moves his fingers to grip the back of her neck and begins to gently push his fingers into her neck. He feels the pressure in her muscles, the resistance as they fight against the small comfort he offers, and he continues to gently press her still-soft skin behind the blonde waves that drape across her back. After a few quiet minutes pass, he gives her neck one final press before slowly dropping his hand and moving to sit by the fire.

It's slowly getting colder, and he welcomes the fire's warmth as he pulls his knees closer to his chest and reaches out his hands to the fire. He watches as the flames lick the air; he follows their sparked path toward the night sky and tilts his head back so that he can stare into the stars.

_It's all so odd_, he thinks as he stares. _We were once among them, but they've always been so far away_. He forms constellations in his mind; their rich stories and myths rumbling through his brain, the memories of hours spent crouching on the floor of a small room suddenly filling his thoughts. He recalls the hours, days, _years_ he spent listening to his mother's quiet tales, the books he read, and the stories he passed on to Octavia. He remembers the incalculable hours he spent sitting with her in his lap listening as he gave her a world she could never see and people she could never meet.

(If he ponders for too long, he thinks he might miss it, miss the time when she wasn't safe, wasn't free, but he had her complete trust and sole devotion. He might just miss the time when he could protect her, could sweep her away to another land with his words, could make her forget her troubles with his stories and histories.)

He's broken from his musings by an over exaggerated huff from his sister as she plops herself on the ground beside him. He starts in surprise and stares across the fire to the empty spot near Lincoln before turning his surprised gaze toward his sister again. She sees his stare but only shrugs in reply. "Here," she says, handing him a handful of rations. He stares down at the paltry offerings before bringing a strip of meat to his mouth. "They don't know how to hunt or cook," Octavia grumbles in response to the look Bellamy makes at its taste and his painful efforts to chew and swallow the meat.

Bellamy finishes swallowing and reaches for a canteen to gulp down a large mouthful of whatever liquid it contains. "No shit," he scoffs, putting the canteen down. He shrugs, "I'll see if I can find anything for us tomorrow if Kane gets us out."

He turns his stare back to the flicking flames and ignores the look that he knows Octavia is shooting him. Bellamy expects her to move to Lincoln in a huff, but instead, she moves closer to him and rests her head on his shoulder. He freezes and, for a brief moment, refuses to breathe, afraid that any sudden movements will scare her away like a wild animal. She rubs her check against his shoulder, mutters, "you're so stiff; breathe won't you."

He lets go of the breath he was holding and allows his arm to reach back and wrap itself around Octavia's shoulders and bring her even closer to him. She snuggles closer, and he tells himself to keep breathing (_has it been over a year since we've done this_, he wonders, _has it been that long?) _With his other hand, he continues to slowly feed himself, all the while holding Octavia to his side.

In the stillness they sit, the four of them lost in their thoughts, with the muted cacophony of evening fireside chats and laughter echoing behind them. Bellamy's mind aches and his limbs shake from the weight of their exhaustion, and his eyes squint at the fire's brightly shadowed waves. And yet, he considers, after all of the death and destruction and grief—after the hands painting crimson with blood, their humanity disguised with grime and mud and blood (both covering and revealing the true tragedy of their actions and words)—and as he sits beside his compatriots, each carrying their share of an immeasurable, unforgettable burden, he thinks he cannot remember the last time his heart was so full.

Bellamy shifts himself to better wrap his arm around Octavia, allowing her to slide down to rest her head on his thigh; as she fidgets into a better position and reaches up to grip his wrist, he leans down his head and kisses the (precious, _oh_ so precious) soft brown hair.

"Big brother," he hears, the words soft and gentle. "Tell us the story of Polaris."

He wants to smile at her request, but feels his heart fill with a bittersweet joy that brings tears to the back of his eyes. Wordless, he leans down and again presses his lips to her head, tightening his arm around her. It's just a phrase, just a title—but it is the _world_, he thinks. _Big brother, tell me the story of Polaris_. He has heard that phrase before, so _so_ very many times. _Tell me the story_, he remembers, recalling days of hiding, of fear, of stories meant to distract and enrich.

He clears his throat. "I haven't told you that story in a while," his tone saying everything that he cannot find words to express.

"So tell me the story," she scoffs, but her grip on his wrist betrays what she will not say.

He looks up at the campfire, at Lincoln's expressive, attentive eyes, at Clarke's unrelenting stares toward the flames, and turns his gaze up to the sky. "There is a star," he begins, his voice rumbling low, "in the constellation of Ursa Minor that helps mark the North Celestial pole. For over three thousand years, it has stayed in position, shining down on the Earth, marking the position of the heavens. From the earth, it seems to never move; it remains firm and stoic, letting all of the other stars glide around it, day after day and year after year." He pauses reflexively, relying on a long dormant script to guide his words and phrases.

"So what?" Octavia says, succumbing to the same reflex from which he spoke.

"So what?" he asks. He tries to be as incredulous as always, but the emotion in his soul betrays his words. He clears his throat and continues, "So what? For ages, it has been the pole star; it has marked the heavens for navigators. If they were lost, they could find this one small star and find their way again. And since the Phoenicians ruled the seas, this lone star has lured untold numbers of adventurers away from home, because they always knew that they had a guide home."

As he speaks, his voice slowly crescendos, "Polaris is the celestial compass which ancient astronomers used to measure the patterns of the stars; and every ancient nation, every empire of old, told their own stories about this star and stars surrounding it."

Octavia tugs on his arm and tilts her head back to look up at him, "Like the Babylonians." She shifts her head to look across the fire toward Lincoln. "They thought the stars formed a leopard." Bellamy can't see Lincoln's eyes through the blazing fire, but sees his lips turn up into a gentle smile. Bellamy holds his sister close, feels the warmth of her body next to him, breathes.

He clears his throat once again, waits for a brief moment, and then proceeds, "In the constellations surrounding Polaris, or Phoenice as the early Greeks called it, the Greeks saw a pair of bears, one big and one small. In their myths they told stories to explain how the bears got up in the sky. As is always the case with the Greek gods," he says wryly, "one of the stories involves a beautiful mortal woman—this one named Callisto. And one day, Zeus noticed her as she spent time with Artemis."

"And of _course_," Octavia interjects, "he _just_ couldn't _help_ himself, and he _had_ to seduce her."

Bellamy snickers deep in his throat and tightens his grip on Octavia. "Of course," he affirms. "Zeus is nothing if not predictable."

Octavia snorts, and all he can do is smile. "I've always hated him," she mutters, and he laughs.

"With good reasons, but shush," he commands. "I'm telling the story." He looks across the fire to Clarke's hunched form and her blank stare toward the hot, flickering flames. He shifts his eyes back to his sister's dark-haired head, continues, "yes, he eventually convinces Callisto to become a new lover. He tried to keep his affair hidden from his wife Hera, but after Callisto gave birth to Zeus's son Arcas, Hera discovered their affair. To punish Callisto, Hera turned her into a bear and sent her to roam the wilderness. Years and years passed, and Arcas matured to be a skilled hunter. One day as he carefully made his way through the wild on a hunt, he discovered a wild, unusual bear that failed to run from him. The bear was…"

"Stop!" Octavia exclaims.

"What?" he asks, his arm tightening protectively around her.

"You didn't ask the question," she reminds, the unspoken _duh_ clear in her tone.

He smiles inside, immediately remembering, but exhales a falsely burdened, wearied, labored sigh. "Octavia," he asks, "who do _you_ think the bear was?"

"Callisto," she answers, and together they snicker.

"Right," he laughs. "Unbeknownst to him, Arcas had stumbled upon his mother. When she had seen her son in the woods, she had hoped to speak to him. But when she approached him, she, of course, couldn't talk and only growled. At what appeared like a display of dangerous aggression, Arcas grabbed and raised his weapons to defend himself against the approaching bear. To protect both Arcas and Callisto from Callisto's death at the hands of her son, Zeus intervened at the last second and changed Arcas into a bear so that mother and son could be together. And as one final act of protection, Zeus placed them high in sky to protect them from Hera's influence."

"But Hera," Octavia concludes, "got the last word, because she forbade Callisto and Arcas from ever setting below the horizon."

He hummss in the back of his throat, refrains from saying the words he was about to utter, and pauses to look around him, trying to capture the moment in his tired mind. _It's a dangerous world_, he knows. It's a frightening, dangerous, deceptive world in which nothing is as it seems, and in which any of them might die at a moment's notice. The world is a dark, spiraling pit of gloom in which hope seems to be a foreign entity—something about which they cannot even dream. He carries a share of the burden of leadership on his young shoulders, and it's a load he fears he cannot handle well. He tries, and he fails—over and over, the weight of his failures shadowing everything he thinks and does.

But this, _this_, he thinks. This cold, dark night in which the air carries the threat of approaching snow, this frozen, damp ground upon which he rests with his companions, these _people_. These flawed and broken compatriots who are each resting with their own fractured selves, carrying burdens none of them ought to know. The ground is damp, the air is sharp, and the people are burdened, but by god, he thinks, _there is nowhere else he would be_. This ground with its deception and broken promises, this shattered world lying in dusty, rusted ruins wrecked by man's greed and anger…it destroys him, infuriates him, strengthens him. But perhaps most of all, he thinks, it reminds him of all he has to lose, all that he can live for, _all that he has_.

(The enemy grounder turned faithful, strong defender of his sister; the golden-haired princess with a spine of steel; the fierce and spirited woman he calls his sister)

This is a world broken. This is a world comprised of shambles of ruins; a world that carries centuries of mistakes. And it is now theirs to rebuild, theirs in which to survive, theirs in which to _live_.

But in this moment—for this moment, he is not alone. Under his fingers, he feels the warm, steady pulse of his sister beating on and _on_, and it is _everything _to him. Clarke sits by his side continuing to breathe, _alive_ against the odds. In this moment, he is not cold. The fire's red flames continue to flicker, the sparks shooting up toward the stars, its heat warming his fingers and face. In this moment, he is dry; in this moment, he is safe; in this moment, he is alive; in this moment, he is _happy_.

He tilts his head up and stares into the stars and for what feels like the first time, truly sees the constellations as they had been seen for millennia. He watches as the stars seem to flicker beneath his burning, tired eyes, traces the shapes of constellations with excited amazement.

As he stares at the stars, searching for one dim light in particular, he quietly continues, "but for all people, the star of Polaris has been a symbol of permanence, since for almost as long as humans have recorded history, it has steadily remained in the same special place.

"For some, the constellation has appeared to be a mountaintop at the very end of the world—a place of peace and the end of fear and uncertainty. Its permanence provided relief to its viewers that they were traveling in the right direction. Against all odds, regardless of the swift passing of time, and of the storms that would agitate the sea into a white-foamed fury, the stars remained hanging in the heavens." He keeps his head tilted toward the sky, and the stars that glisten in the heavens above them. "It's a promise," he whispers. "A promise of renewal, of finding _home_ again; of remembering joy and desire amidst the pain and burdens of life on earth."

He feels Octavia move in his arms and moves his head down so that his eyes can meet hers. "Where is it?" she whispers. 

He pulls her arm up and points it toward the sky, "there," he says.

Octavia's breath catches in her throat, and he wonders if this moment means as much to her as it does to him. She slowly sits up and pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. They sit next to each other, their shoulders brushing against each other's, and he suddenly notices that Clarke too is staring at the stars. Even in the flickering shadows, he can see the swollen rings around her eyes, and he feels his heart break. She moves her gaze from the skies to him, and for a long moment, they stare at each other (he holds his breath, tries not to move, tries not to breathe). After the moment passes, he expects her to return to staring at the fire. Instead, she tilts her head back to stare at the stars, and he can see her stare in Polaris' direction.

"Where is it?" she asks, her voice just barely louder than the crackle of the flickering flames.

"Look a little less than 40 degrees up from the horizon," he quietly instructs. She peers toward the northern horizon, and he sits, watching her in silence. She sits and stares, and like Octavia, pulls her knees toward her chest.

The four of them sit, lost in their thoughts, as the sounds of the camp's activity begin to die away and lights begin to be extinguished. As they sit, Octavia leans over to rest her head on his shoulder, and slowly, gently, he lifts his arm to wrap around her shoulders and pull her closer.

And together, silently, under the watchful gaze of the heavens, they rest.


End file.
